Fourth Rail Package – Action for Rail online campaign

To the Secretary all Branches,Council of Executive members,Regional Councils and Regional Offices.

Dear Colleagues,

Fourth Rail Package – Action for Rail online campaign

On 25-26 February 2014, MEPs will be debating and voting on The Fourth Railway Package - a new set of regulations coming out of the European Commission that aims to impose privatisation on domestic rail passenger services in every EU member state. This will make it impossible for any UK government to change our failed privatised model, and create an integrated, publicly owned railway.

Compared to publicly owned railways in Europe, we have the highest fares, and evidence shows that our trains tend to be more over-crowded and slower than those in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Currently, on the whole, every EU member state has the freedom to choose which way it wants to run its passenger rail services. These measures will remove that freedom, imposing a model of fragmentation and privatisation, which is estimated to increase costs of running the railways by £1.2bn a year in the UK.

The Fourth Railway Package would make it impossible to run a successful and publicly owned railway such as we currently see on the East Coast Main Line.